WEST NEW YORK, N.J. -- Hundreds of Catholic faithful and curious onlookers descended on a West New York street Thursday, eager to visit a tree that many are convinced bears an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Virgin Mary as worshipped in Mexico....

Conquer evil men by your gentle kindness, and make zealous men wonder at your goodness. Put the lover of legality to shame by your compassion. With the afflicted be afflicted in mind. Love all men, but keep distant from all men.—St. Isaac of Syria

This is pathetic, I guess you can imagine anything if you look hard enough. I am very familiar with the story of "Our Lady of Guadalupe" and this only lessens and belittles this belief..........Come on folks call it what it is: The scar from a tree limb cutting.

North American Eastern Orthodox Parish Council Delegate for the Canonization of Saints Twin Towers and Pentagon, as well as the Propagation of the Doctrine of the Assumption of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 (NAEOPCDCSTTPPDAMAFM®).

Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Y'all cynics stop hating on Our Lady, She can appear where and how and to whomever She likes

stay blessed,habte selassie

Oh, come one, are you serious? We hate Our Lady, Im sure you are not serious. Of course she can appear where and how whenever she likes, but this example is the same example as seeing her image in a grilled cheese sandwich, remember that episode??

But really, I have to give The Blessed Mother more credit than this especially since most of her apparitions occur to individuals of great faith and the Fatima appearance was to ONLY 3 children, the multitudes DID NOT SEE HER only the manifestation of her appearance of the sun as reported in Portugal.

Or for another, on a country road fence post, or a foggy image on a building window, all of which were proven fakes.

This will have some substance if some miracles occur as the result of this happenstance of tree triming along a urban street.

"Hades is not a place, no, but a state of the soul. It begins here on earth. Just so, paradise begins in the soul of a man here in the earthly life. Here we already have contact with the divine..." -St. John, Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco, Homily On the Sunday of Orthodoxy

My grandmother came to this country from Mexico, and when I was growing up there my hometown was about evenly split between Latinos and Anglos, so I definitely grew up with this stuff about "la virgen", but I agree with the other poster...COM'ON. It's a freaking tree, people. The virgin is not appearing in a tree, or on a tortilla, or on an oil stain under a freeway overpass, or any of the many, many other places people have claimed to have seen here over the years. Quit making belief in St. Mary seem like something for crazy people. Heck, quit BEING crazy people. There is proper devotion to the Theotokos, but this is absolutely something else.

Reminds me of the old Peanuts comic strip where Lucy, Linus, and Charlie Brown are trying to recognize shapes in clouds (sorry i only have the dialogue and not the actual strip):

Lucy Van Pelt: Aren’t the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton. I could just lie here all day and watch them drift by. If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud’s formations. What do you think you see, Linus? Linus Van Pelt: Well, those clouds up there look to me look like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean. That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor. And that group of clouds over theregives me the impression of the Stoning of Stephen. I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side. Lucy Van Pelt: Uh huh. That’s very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown? Charlie Brown: Well… I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie, but I changed my mind.

I must have seen Our Lady of Guadalupe 100 times as a kid walking around in the neighborhood woods (mostly around neighbor's yards).

Before we hop on this too hard an hack it to bits, though, if just one of these people turns to the Lord, is it not possible that they see an icon of the Mother of God there? The guy who cut the tree limb was not trying to be an iconographer, but if the most humble and unintentional icon brings one to faith--have we no mercy? May the Lord move them to His Faith.

Hack me to bits instead of hacking these people to bits. Whether it is OLO Guadalupe or not, I have no doubt that the Theotokos has not chosen this tree as the only place where she will not give intercession to those inclined to the Lord.

The Icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe is in the OCA Cathedral in Mexico City.....

A major mistake, like the painting of an icon of the 13th century Roman Catholic saint Anthony of Padua in the Holy Trinity Church in Oxnard, CA.

It's on the righthand column, the lowest of the three icons. It clearly shows the saint as he is depicted in RC religious art, with distinctive monastic tonsure, brown habit, and bearing the Christ-child.

Neither this image, nor OL of Guadalupe, are part of Orthodox tradition, and the images should have no place in any Orthodox church.

Moral of the story: It might look like an icon, but icon it ain't.

« Last Edit: July 25, 2012, 05:10:25 AM by LBK »

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Of course if this were a myrrh streaming Ikon that had been written by an Orthodox person, nearly everyone would be pretty quick to accept it and proclaim it as proof of God's existence.

Which it is not. Red herring.

All I am saying is that we should subject ourselves to the same level of scrutiny as we do others. That isn't a red herring.

If more diligent scrutiny was paid to what is painted, there wouldn't be a problem with spiritual and theological confusion when folks see images in their churches which fall short of properly proclaiming and expressing what Orthodoxy teaches and espouses.

The presence of non-Orthodox images in churches and their bookstores is just as objectionable and wrong as inserting non-Orthodox hymns into the Divine Liturgy.

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An icon is an image. Period. Do a Google image search of the Greek word for icon ( εικονα ) and see for yourself. Now search the Greek term for "Buddhist icon" ( βουδιστή εικονα ) and see what comes up.A photograph is an icon. The Mona Lisa is an icon. The Reclining Buddha is an icon. Shiva Nataraja is an icon.It's just that none of these are Orthodox Christian Icons.

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An icon is an image. Period. Do a Google image search of the Greek word for icon ( εικονα ) and see for yourself. Now search the Greek term for "Buddhist icon" ( βουδιστή εικονα ) and see what comes up.A photograph is an icon. The Mona Lisa is an icon. The Reclining Buddha is an icon. Shiva Nataraja is an icon.It's just that none of these are Orthodox Christian Icons.

Another irrelevance, ozgeorge. We are talking about religious imagery (Guadalupe, etc) which is mistaken for proper Orthodox iconography because of its presence from time to time in Orthodox churches.

A Greek-speaker easily grasps the context of the word eikona from its use. Using the word aghia to precede eikona removes all doubt as to what sort of image is being referred to.

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Many times. This is Holy Trinity Church in Oxnard CA. It was under ROCOR, but in the various schisms which effected ROCOR in recent decades, it split away and is currently, I believe, under the Synod in Resistance. The offending icon was a mistake by the neophyte convert iconographer who thought his patron saint was Anthony of Padua rather than Anthony the Great.

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Using the word aghia to precede eikona removes all doubt as to what sort of image is being referred to.

Really? I'm a Greek-speaker who attends a purely Greek-speaking church, and we never call it an "aghia eikona", we just call it an "eikona", which is what we also call the images on the evening news on TV. But I guess you should know.

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The offending icon was a mistake by the neophyte convert iconographer who thought his patron saint was Anthony of Padua rather than Anthony the Great.

I find it very, very difficult to believe that someone as green as this was given a commission to paint a church, or even part of it. Really? To whom was he praying to as he was painting the "icon"? What podlinnik did he use as a reference as to how to paint St Anthony? Was he working alone, or with others? If the latter, why didn't they pull him up on the error?

Nope, don't buy that story.

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Using the word aghia to precede eikona removes all doubt as to what sort of image is being referred to.

Really? I'm a Greek-speaker who attends a purely Greek-speaking church, and we never call it an "aghia eikona", we just call it an "eikona", which is what we also call the images on the evening news on TV. But I guess you should know.

Again, you are missing what I have written. Go back and read my post again on context.

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Using the word aghia to precede eikona removes all doubt as to what sort of image is being referred to.

Really? I'm a Greek-speaker who attends a purely Greek-speaking church, and we never call it an "aghia eikona", we just call it an "eikona", which is what we also call the images on the evening news on TV. But I guess you should know.

Meaning: "Nobody actually does this LBK, so what's your point?"

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If you're living a happy life as a Christian, you're doing something wrong.

Using the word aghia to precede eikona removes all doubt as to what sort of image is being referred to.

Really? I'm a Greek-speaker who attends a purely Greek-speaking church, and we never call it an "aghia eikona", we just call it an "eikona", which is what we also call the images on the evening news on TV. But I guess you should know.

I've heard many, many Greek speakers, both here, and in Greece, and in written materials, refer to icons as aghies eikones about as often as just eikones. Russians are the same, they preface ikona or obraz with svyataya quite frequently.

« Last Edit: July 25, 2012, 08:49:29 AM by LBK »

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Before we hop on this too hard an hack it to bits, though, if just one of these people turns to the Lord, is it not possible that they see an icon of the Mother of God there? The guy who cut the tree limb was not trying to be an iconographer, but if the most humble and unintentional icon brings one to faith--have we no mercy? May the Lord move them to His Faith.

Hack me to bits instead of hacking these people to bits. Whether it is OLO Guadalupe or not, I have no doubt that the Theotokos has not chosen this tree as the only place where she will not give intercession to those inclined to the Lord.

I agree, Father.

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"For this God is our God forever and ever; He will be our guide, even to the end." Psalm 48:14